After much effort both physical and political, a new raised section of John V. Lindsay East River Park opened this past Memorial Day. When completed, the new park, as part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, should withstand the rising levels and tides of climate change.
Residents and some parks advocates complained as the project was proposed and planned. So many mature tress would be sacrificed. Neighborhood playing fields would vanish for years.
When the new section opened, visitors complained too – this is New York, after all. There's no shade! So much concrete! Plus now, the section north of this one is shut down. All the way up to Stuyvesant Cove.
Well, yes. These huge projects do have to be completed step by step.
Meanwhile, of course there's no shade at this new section by the Williamsburg Bridge: The freshly planted trees are still mere young'uns.
With all its amenities, this piece of riverfront parkland isn't yet connected to adjacent acreage, so as it's fairly far from the subway it's not so easy to get to if you don't live close by.
But lots of people do live close by.
The present access is via a footbridge at the the south side of Delancey Street, hard by the soaring arches of the Williamsburg Bridge itself.
(Biking would be a good option, but not if the biking itself is your reason for going – the bike path within is necessarily a mere stump.)
Once inside, you come upon square stone blocks picturesquely fringing snazzy new basketball courts.
The bridge looms overhead.
Past new plantings and wide grassy fields the Brooklyn skyline rises. That's right – the Brooklyn skyline. Whodathunk? (That tallest building is called Brooklyn Tower. Get used to it. The years when Brooklyn builders weren't allowed to build higher than the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower are long past.)
The intervening brick structure in the photo above is the East River Park Fireboat House. The Village Sun reported last year as construction of the park was underway that this "two-story Moderne-style building was erected in 1941 in East River Park for the Fire Department’s Marine Company 66, replacing similar structures that had operated from a pier at the end of Grand Street since 1898." Most recently the building served as the headquarters of our friends at the Lower East Side Ecology Center.
The barbecue area wasn't in use at 10 in the morning on a Sunday. But it's ready.
A handful of people were about. Strolling. Fishing.
The black dog you see in the distance in the next photo ran up to me eagerly, tennis ball in mouth. Dogs, right?
The day was already hot, making this fountain tempting.
The soccer field, baseball field, and tennis courts are already popular. Another complaint: there are only half as many tennis courts as there were before climate change got so urgent. People were already queuing for a court at the Brian Watkins Tennis Center. (It's named for "a Utah tourist and University of Idaho tennis player who was slain in the subway while attending the 1990 U.S. Open," Courts morbidly explains. The Courts article also has some good photos of this part of the park in former days.)
It was a slow Sunday morning. But the amount of trash this worker had collected suggested much heavier recent use of the grounds.
Some doubted whether this park would actually get off the ground – or off sea level, to be precise. Well, it did. And there's clearly much more to come. A small but maybe not insignificant bit of evidence that this chaotic, almost ungovernable city can actually get important things done. Sometimes.
All photos © Oren Hope
